At the recent Republican Convention a clearly befuddled Clint Eastwood spent 12 minutes haranguing an empty chair that was supposed to represent Barack Obama. Here’s Jon Stewart’s take…
Actually, I still can’t get embedding from The Daily Show working, so I have to send you to this page here to view the video. Trust me, it’s worth the trip.
Was Eastwood undermining Romney ?
I don’t know if he undermined Romney, but he certainly destroyed his own reputation.
twitter went mental as Eastwood’s speech took off – many laughs
and in quick time this ghost account appeared
Invisible Obama
@InvisibleObama
Send me requests for an invisible Reddit AMA at invisibleobama2012@gmail.com.
Stage left of Clint Eastwood · https://www.facebook.com/TheRealInvisibleObama
twitter went mental as Eastwood’s speech took off – many laughs
The silly old fool is now the laughing stock of the world.
I was at the office so listening to the RNC instead of watching it…for the first 5 minutes.
Then I got confused about who he was talking to so switched on video and was profoundly befuddled by Eastwood’s performance.
Then I got confused about who he was talking to so switched on video and was profoundly befuddled by Eastwood’s performance.
You were simply shocked and amazed. It is poor old Clint Eastwood that is confused and befuddled.
Ahhh yes, good point.
Clint’s Charlie Sheen moment. Obviously not suited to public appearances anymore. His last acting role in “Gran Torino” was not bad actually. And he seemingly tried to make ammends for his life long RWNJobery with his two WWII movies.
My son trying to be funny sent me the first four Dirty Harry movies last week. Watched “Sudden Impact”, grainy out of focus hand cannon mayhem galore in San Francisco and small California beach towns.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Clint Eastwood morphed into Grandpa Simpson before our very eyes.
Ouch ! Love the line that ‘..it’s the president that only the republicans see..’
Bill maher was on the money… I knew he was republican but I thought he was old school not a hard out right wing asshole.
Absolutely worth the click-through. Laughed till I cried when I watched it last night, especially when Eastwood tries to berate Invisible Obama for getting them into Afghanistan …
I had to turn it off after a couple of minutes it was so painful. You have to think though…who the hell on the Convention organising team OK’d this!
The only explanation is that they’ve bought so much into their own propaganda that they seriously couldn’t even consider that Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair might go down poorly.
On the other hand, if we consider that they don’t actually care if something looks stupid to liberals as long as their own base thinks it’s tremendously funny, it starts to make some kind of sense. Then they can just focus on legislating votes away from people of colour and finding ways to sue over unfavourable results the day after the election.
“For all the finger-pointing about Clint Eastwood’s rambling conversation with an empty chair on Thursday night, the most bizarre, head-scratching 12 minutes in recent political convention history were set in motion by Mitt Romney himself and made possible by his aides, who had shrouded the actor’s appearance in secrecy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us/politics/romney-aides-scratch-their-heads-over-eastwoods-speech.html?pagewanted=all
I find the notion that CV and I share a common opinion hard to swallow, but that was my reaction too. I couldn’t watch the 12 minutes all the way through. It was that painful.
Apparently the Romney team is experiencing some “internal disagreements” about who exactly approved the appearance:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/scocca/2012/08/clint_eastwood_gop_convention_the_romney_campaign_sells_out_its_surprise_speaker_.html
I’d quite like to juxtapose this from Jim’s link:
“Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks.”
With this from SHG’s:
““Not me,” said an exasperated-looking senior adviser, when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech.”
“In 1988, George Bush briefly considered choosing him [Eastwood] as his running mate; he picked Dan Quayle instead.”
Romney would have been better off calling Dan Quayle, which shows you how bad Dirty Harry was. (Geez can anyone picture Clint as VP?)
Yeah, I can. But in a world of Sonny Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan there’s not that many surprises.
This performance surely has two parties loosing face and dignity – Mr Romney and Mr Eastwood. The first for living in lala land and the second who made it clear to us all.
He shot the republicans in the foot so many times denegrating lawyers in the whitehouse Romney is a law graduate.
Along with his endorsement of Obamas Detroit rescue of the motor industry maybe this was Eastwood making Obama’s day!
The right have very little imagination as they are always focused on the bottom line.
I’ve been wanting to pass comment on this for a couple of days, but I found the whole thing so surreal I’ve been at a loss to know where to start.
That’s what Stewart is so good at though, eh? Interpreting the insanity of it all.
I think what I found most bizarre was the reaction of the audience, cheering and applauding as if it were a real debate and Clint was actually scoring mad points outwitting the imaginary man in the chair.
That’s American audiences for you. They scream and cheer and anything. Especially if they’re Republican. Quite mad.
Pro wrestling.
That is all.
Pro wrestling.
That is all.
Actually, pro wrestlers only PRETEND to be insane.
Pro wrestling is like the circus. You can appreciate the showmanship while knowing that they’ve done some planning.
An RNC audience, on the other hand, is probably responding to the gigantic carefully-out-of-camera-sight APPLAUSE signs.
And who holds up the LOOK VACANT and BREATHE THROUGH YOUR MOUTH signs?
Republican crowd. Some things don’t need to be prompted.
That’s American audiences for you. They scream and cheer and anything. Especially if they’re Republican.
To be fair, however, you have to acknowledge that, four years ago, plenty of Democrats were screaming and cheering for that fraud Obama and his empty “hope and change” rhetoric.
And that mindless old fool Clint Eastwood was no doubt one of the most avid worshippers.
Dude. There was no one in the chair.
It’s not the same thing.
If Detective Callahan says there was someone in the chair, there was someone in the freaking chair!
lolz
Nothing new there, I still feel like puking just from the memory of Dubya Bush getting three standing ovations per minute for his “I like good things, I don’t like bad things.” speeches.
Sure, but the Republicans cannot be “miss-underestimated”, ‘Dirty Harry’ debacle notwithstanding given the technical vote rigging/disenfranchisement and other jiggery pokery going on in the land of the free.
Eastwooding, folks! Won’t be long before Max Key shows Dad how to do it.
Oh TRP you’re such a mongrel ! How dare you mention the boy. That’s off-limits talk. You can’t mention the kids. Never mind that Fat-uous (I refer to what passes for the mind) Bennett inferentially mentions the kids all the time……you know the kids who don’t matter……the ones who slip in and out of poverty every other week. Like ergo it doesn’t matter. After all, their parents are dirty beneficiaries (like her own overpaid bus-sized arse wasn’t ?).
It’s PC gone mad!
Some brilliant stuff coming out of this:
http://mashable.com/2012/08/30/clint-eastwood-chair-meme/
I hear that John Campbell fromTV3 was impressed with Clint’s performance. I mean Campbell loves the whole empty chair interview schtick.